Remembering Vicariously
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
It is almost Christmas. It’s early evening and it’s snowing outside. Houses on the street are all lit up with coloured lights. The house on the corner has a giant cross that runs down the side as it does every year. I am not religious but it is kind of comforting in a way. I just poured a wee dram of Glenfidditch which strangely enough is also comforting. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Let’s go back a bit. Let’s talk about a long time ago – not when Bruce Waite was a kid, not into the 1920s. Let’s go back to our childhood.
When I was writing this column. I started to think about last Christmas and the fun our great-grandchildren had. I started to feel a terrible longing; a longing to be a child again – to be so excited on Christmas Eve I couldn’t sleep. Yet afraid not to in case Santa peeked through the window and my eyes were open.
I wanted to be back in our old house on Mortimer Avenue in Toronto when I was eight years old – or even ten. You could believe longer back then.
Nowadays kids know too much. Some witch on CNN or the dreaded FOX-NEWS would spill the beans ‘Santa is a fake,’ as if she had some kind of exclusive or something. TV ruins everything.
I think we believed longer back then because we wanted to. You older folks will remember this. Mary won’t she’s much too young. But everybody else remembers.
We would listen to CFRB or CFOR as the weatherman reported seeing a mysterious sleigh flying over Kapuskasing, Huntsville, Gravenhurst, he was on his way.
How can he find his way now? There are new subdivisions all over the place? He can use GPS I guess. My daughter-in-law uses something called Waze or Raze (whatever it is it has ‘aze’ in it. It even tells you where the traffic jams are. I assume it still works if you are in a sleigh a thousand feet in the air, which brings me to another matter. How does he find the kids who live in apartment towers? And there are no chimney’s. Can a big fat guy slide through an air conditioning unit, I don’t know. I have trouble climbing out of the back seat of a taxi and I am slim and beautiful, Santa could never make it.
I figure Santa must have flown south, maybe Australia or New Zealand and worked his way back up. Imagine he would call on every house in the world in one night — one night? I sent a letter to my sister in Winnipeg – it took three weeks. I sent 50 bucks for some stuff in a Hong Kong Honeymoon Accessories Catalogue – it never arrived at all; unless the Amazon driver found them and wanted to surprise his wife – or perish the thought, his neighbour’s wife.
I don’t suppose we had much money when I was a kid. My dad was overseas for five years and I never heard of anyone coming home wealthy.
(My mother gave me a dollar to go to Calvert’s grocery store when I was six and I lost it. She mentioned it again at her hundredth birthday party. I was going to give it back to her then but with interest, inflation, and of course Trump’s tariffs , it was 26 thousand dollars and she wouldn’t take my cheque.)
But I don’t remember ever wanting for anything.
That’s not true, I wanted a B.B. gun; never got it. My mother was always afraid I’d shoot my sister. I borrowed one; then I shot my sister. I’d buy one now, but I would have to register the thing with the damned government. I’ll check with the OPP. Across the border I could buy a Howitzer and a cop would help me carry it into the house.
Even your stocking was a big deal in the 40’s. There might be an orange, or a couple of apples. Little stuff – but it was wonderful. The shame is I can’t quite remember.
I can remember coming downstairs on Christmas morning. Always a little afraid Santa hadn’t come. You remember doing that?
Did you leave out milk and cookies?
I think after Dad came home from the war, we left Santa a beer. I’ll bet some years old St. Nick was so bagged he didn’t sober up until July.
Do you remember when you finally found out he wasn’t real? Wasn’t that devastating? My friend, John, still doesn’t know. How Louise has kept it from him all these years I’ll never know.
There was no more magic, no more elves. Reindeer are kind of scruffy little things and they really can’t fly.
I wish sometimes we could be children forever. I never read Peter Pan when I was little. But he was a kid who refused to grow old.
Wouldn’t that be marvellous? To say, ‘Look, God, if it’s all the same to you I’ll just hang around here, about 10 for the next 75 or 80 years.’
But in a lot of ways, we haven’t really grown old. When we are alone and it’s quiet and the snow is floating softly by the window, we think back to a long time ago. We’re still there. Oh sure we are a little older, a little greyer and we get tired sometimes.
But on Christmas morning it all comes back, the fun, the wonder. We see it all again through the sparkling eyes of our grandchildren and for many of us, our great grandchildren.
The laughter, the excitement, is still there
We watch them and listen to them and love them and the magic comes back and we are there. We are ten years old once more.
(Image Supplied)
